A UNIFORM SYSTEM OF BANKRUPTCY. FROM A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, ON THE 18TH OF MAY, 1840, ON THE PROPOSED AMENDMENT TO THE BILL ESTABLISHING A UNIFORM SYSTEM OF BANKRUPTCY. | has been given to State laws. I have great respect, habitually, for judicial decisions; but it has nevertheless, I must say, always appeared to me that the distinctions on which these decisions are founded are slender, and that they evade, without answering, the objections founded on the great political and commercial objects intended to be secured by this part of the Constitution. But these decisions, whether right or wrong, afford no effectual relief. The have stated render them useless, as to the purpose of a general discharge. So much of the concerns of every man of business is with citizens of other States than his own, and with foreigners, that the partial extent to which the validity of State discharges reaches is of little benefit. LET me remind you, then, in the first place, Sir, that, commercial as the country is, and having experienced as it has done, and experiencing as it now does, great vicissitudes of trade and business, it is almost forty years since any law has been in force by which any honest man, failing in business, could be effectually discharged from debt by surrendering his property. The former bankrupt law was repealed on the 19th of December, 1803. From that day to this, the condition of an insolvent, how-qualifications and limitations which I ever honest and worthy, has been utterly hopeless, so far as he depended on any legal mode of relief. This state of things has arisen from the peculiar provisions of the Constitution of the United States, and from the omission by Congress to exercise this branch of its constitutional power. By the Constitution, the States are prohibited from passing laws impairing the obligation of contracts. Bankrupt laws impair the obligation of contracts, if they discharge the bankrupt from his debts without payment. The States, therefore, cannot pass such laws. The power, then, is taken from the States, and placed in our hands. It is true that it has been decided, that, in regard to contracts entered into after the passage of any State bankrupt law, between the citizens of the State having such law, and sued in the State courts, a State discharge may prevail. So far, effect The States, then, cannot pass effectual bankrupt laws; that is, effectual for the discharge of the debtor. There is no doubt that most, if not all, the States would now pass such laws, if they had the power; although their legislation would be various, interfering, and full of all the evils which the Constitution of the United States intended to provide against. But they have not the power; Congress, which has the power, does not exercise it. This is the peculiarity of our condition. The States would pass bankrupt laws, but they can. not; we can, but we will not. And be tween this want of power in the States and want of will in Congress, unfortunate insolvents are left to hopeless bondage. There are probably one or two hundred thousand debtors, honest, sober, and industrious, who drag out lives useless to themselves, useless to their fam- | ilies, and useless to their country, for no reason but that they cannot be legally discharged from debts in which misfortunes have involved them, and which | there is no possibility of their ever paying. I repeat, again, that these cases have now been accumulating for a whole generation. It is true they are not imprisoned; but there may be, and there are, restraint and bondage outside the walls of the jail, as well as in. Their power of earning is, in truth, taken away, their faculty of useful employment is paralyzed, and hope itself become extinguished. Creditors, generally, are not inhuman or unkind; but there will be found some who hold on, and the more a debtor struggles to free himself, the more they feel encouraged to hold on. The mode of reasoning is, that, the more honest the debtor may be, the more industrious, the more disposed to struggle and bear up against his misfortunes, the greater the chance is, that, in the end, especially if the humanity of others shall have led them to release him, their own debts may be finally recovered. Now, in this state of our constitu- | tional powers and duties, in this state of our laws, and with this actually existing condition of so many insolvents before us, it is not too serious to ask every member of the Senate to put it to his own conscience to say, whether we are not bound to exercise our constitutional duty. Can we abstain from exercising it? The States give to their own laws all the effect they can. shows that they desire the power to be exercised. Several States have, in the most solemn manner, made known their earnest wishes to Congress. If we still refuse, what is to be done? Many of these insolvent persons are young men with young families. Like other men, This they have capacities both for action and enjoyment. Are we to stifle all these for ever? Are we to suffer all these persons, many of them meritorious and respectable, to be pressed to the earth for ever, by a load of hopeless debt? The existing diversities and contradictions of State laws on the subject admirably illustrate the objects of this part of the Constitution, as stated by Mr. Madison; and they form that precise case for which the clause was inserted. The very evil intended to be provided against is before us, and around us, and pressing us on all sides. How can we, how dare we, make a perfect dead letter of this part of the Constitution, which we have sworn to support? The insolvent persons have not the power of locomotion. They cannot travel from State to State. They are prisoners. To my certain knowledge, there are many who cannot even come here to the seat of government, to present their petitions to Congress, so great is their fear that some creditor will dog their heels, and arrest them in some intervening State, or in this District, in the hope that friends will appear to save them, by payment of the debt, from imprisonment. These are truths; not creditable to the country, but they are truths. I am sorry for their existence. Sir, there is one crime, quite too common, which the laws of man do not punish, but which cannot escape the justice of God; and that is, the arrest and confinement of a debtor by his creditor, with no motive on earth but the hope that some friend, or some relative, perhaps almost as poor as himself, his mother it may be, or his sisters, or his daughters, will give up all their own little pittance, and make beggars of themselves, to save him from the horrors of a loathsome jail. Human retribution cannot reach this guilt; human feeling may not penetrate the flinty heart that perpetrates it; but an hour is surely coming, with more than human retribution on its wings, when that flint shall be melted, either by the power of penitence and grace, of in the fires of remorse Sir, I verily believe that the power of | is it that we have free institutions of perpetuating debts against debtors, for government? What is it that we have no substantial good to the creditor him- public and popular assemblies? What self, and the power of imprisonment for is even this Constitution itself to them, debt, at least as it existed in this coun- in its actual operation, and as we now try ten years ago, have imposed more administer it? What is its aspect to restraint on personal liberty than the them, but an aspect of stern, implacable law of debtor and creditor imposes in severity? an aspect of refusal, denial, any other Christian and commercial and frowning rebuke? nay, more than country. If any public good were at- that, an aspect not only of austerity and tained, any high political object an- rebuke, but, as they must think it, of swered, by such laws, there might be plain injustice also, since it will not resome reason for counselling submission lieve them, nor suffer others to give them and sufferance to individuals. But the relief? What love can they feel towards result is bad, every way. It is bad to the the Constitution of their country, which public and to the country, which loses has taken the power of striking off their the efforts and the industry of so many bonds from their own paternal State useful and capable citizens. It is bad governments, and yet, inexorable to all to creditors, because there is no secu- the cries of justice and of mercy, holds rity against preferences, no principle of it unexercised in its own fast and unreequality, and no encouragement for hon- lenting grasp? They find themselves est, fair, and seasonable assignments of bondsmen, because we will not exeeffects. As to the debtor, however good cute the commands of the Constitution; his intentions or earnest his endeavors, bondsmen to debts they cannot pay, it subdues his spirit and degrades him and which all know they cannot pay, in his own esteem; and if he attempts and which take away the power of supany thing for the purpose of obtaining porting themselves. Other slaves have food and clothing for his family, he is masters, charged with the duty of supdriven to unworthy shifts and disguises, port and protection; but their masters to the use of other persons' names, to neither clothe, nor feed, nor shelter; the adoption of the character of agent, they only bind. and various other contrivances, to keep the little earnings of the day from the reach of his creditors. Fathers act in the name of their sons, sons act in the name of their fathers; all constantly exposed to the greatest temptation to misrepresent facts and to evade the law, if creditors should strike. All this is evil, unmixed evil. And what is it all for? Of what benefit to anybody? Who likes it? Who wishes it? What class of creditors desire it? What consideration of public good demands it? Sir, we talk much, and talk warmly, of political liberty; and well we may, for it is among the chief of public blessings. But who can enjoy political liberty if he is deprived, permanently, of persona. liberty, and the exercise of his own industry and his own faculties? To those unfortunate individuals, doomed to the everlasting bondage of debt, what But, Sir, the fault is not in the Constitution. The Constitution is beneficent as well as wise in all its provisions on this subject. The fault, I must be allowed to say, is in us, who have suffered ourselves quite too long to neglect the duty incumbent upon us. The time will come, Sir, when we shall look back and wonder at the long delay of this just and salutary measure. We shall then feel as we now feel when we reflect on that progress of opinion which has already done so much on another connected subject; I mean the abolition of imprisonment for debt. What should we say at this day, if it were proposed to re-establish arrest and imprisonment for debt, as it existed in most of the States even so late as twenty years ago? I mean for debt alone, for mere, pure debt, without charge or suspicion of fraud or falsehood. Si, it is about that length of time. I thick, since you,1 who now preside overload, from all classes and all quarters. our deliberations, began here your efforts for the abolition of imprisonment for debt: and a better work was never be gan in the Capitol. Ever remembered and ever honored be that noble effort! You drew the attention of the public to the question, whether, in a civilized and Christian country, debt incurred with out fraud, and remaining unpaid with out fault, is a crime, and a crime fit to be punished by denying to the cffender the enjoyment of the light of heaven, and shutting him up within four walls Your own good sense, and that instinct of right feeling which often outruns sagacity, carried you at once to a result to which others were more slowly brought but to which nearly all have at length been brought, by reason, reflection, and argument. Your movement led the way; it became an example, and has had a powerful effect on both sides of the At- | lantic. Imprisonment for debt, or even arrest and holding to bail for mere debt, no longer exists in England; and former laws on the subject have been greatly modified and mitigated, as we all know, in our States. "Abolition of imprisonment for debt," your own words in the title of your own bill, has become the title of an act of Parliament. Sir, I am glad of an occasion to pay you the tribute of my sincere respect for these your labors in the cause of humanity and enlightened policy. For these labors thousands of grateful hearts have thanked you; and other thousands of hearts, not yet full of joy for the accomplishment of their hopes, full, rather, at the present moment, of deep and distressing anxiety, have yet the pleasure to know that your advice, your counsel, and your influence will all be given in favor of what is intended for their relief in the bill before us. Mr. President, let us atone for the omissions of the past by a prompt and efficient discharge of present duty. The demand for this measure is not partial or local. It comes to us, earnest and 1 Hon. Richard M. Johnson, Vice-President of the United States. The time is come when we must answer it to our own consciences, if we sufer longer delay or postponement. High hopes, high duties, and high responsibil ties concentrate themselves on this measure and this moment. With a power to pass a bankrupt law, which no other legislature in the country possesses, with a power of giving relief to many, doing injustice to none, I again ask every nan who hears me, if he can content himself without an honest attempt to exercise that power. We may think it would be better to leave the power with the States; but it was not left with the States; they have it not, and we cannot give it to them. It is in our hands, to be exercised by us, or to be for ever useless and lifeless. Under these circumstances. does not every man's heart tell him that he has a duty to discharge? If the final vote shall be given this day, and if that vote shall leave thousands of our fellowcitizens and their families, in hopeless and helpless distress, to everlasting subjection to irredeemable debt, can we go to our beds with satisfied consciences? Can we lay our heads upon our pillows, and, without self-reproach, supplicate the Almighty Mercy to forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors? Sir, let us meet the unanimous wishes of the country, and proclaim relief to the unfortunate throughout the land. What should hinder? What should stay our hands from this good work? Creditors do not oppose it, they apply for it; debtors solicit it, with an importunity, earnestness, and anxiety not to be described; the Constitution enjoins it; and all the considerations of justice, policy, and propriety, which are wrapped up in the phrase Public Duty, demand it, as I think, and demand it loudly and imperatively, at our hands. Sir, let us gratify the whole country, for once, with the joyous clang of chains, joyous because heard falling from the limbs of men. The wisest among those whom I address can desire nothing more beneficial than this measure, or more universally desired; and he who is youngest may not expect to live long enough to see a bet ency, and despair, and restored again to the circles of industrious, independent, and happy life! ter opportunity of causing new pleasures and a happiness long untasted to spring up in the hearts of the poor and the humble. How many husbands and fa- Sir, let it be to the honor of Congress thers are looking with hopes which they that, in these days of political strife and cannot suppress, and yet hardly dare to controversy, we have laid aside for once cherish, for the result of this debate! the sin that most easily besets us, and, How many wives and mothers will pass with unanimity of counsel, and with sleepless and feverish nights, until they singleness of heart and of purpose, have know whether they and their families accomplished for our country one measeball be raised from poverty, despond-ure of unquestionable good |